On Speech and Gestures Synchrony

Previous research works proved the existence of a synchronization
between speech and holds in adults and in 9 year old children with a rich
linguistic vocabulary and advanced language skills. When and how does this
synchrony develop during child language acquisition? Could it be observed also
in children younger than 9? The present work aims to answer the above
questions reporting on the analysis of narrations produced by three different age
groups of Italian children (9, 5 and 3 year olds). Measurements are provided on
the amount of synchronization between speech pauses and holds in the three
different groups, as a function of the duration of the narrations. The results
show that, as far as the reported data concerns, in children, as in adults, holds
and speech pauses are to a certain extent synchronized and play similar
functions, suggesting that they may be considered as a multi-determined
phenomenon exploited by the speaker under the guidance of a unified planning
process to satisfy a communicative intention. In addition, considering the role
that speech pauses play in communication, we speculate on the possibility that
holds may serve to similar purposes supporting the hypothesis that gestures as
speech are an expressive resource that can take on different functions depending
on the communicative demand. While speech pauses are likely to play the role
of signalling mental activation processes aimed at replacing the “old spoken
content” of the communicative plan with a new one, holds may signal mental
activation processes aimed at replacing the “old visible bodily action” with new
ones reflecting the representational and/or propositional contribution of gestures
to the new communicative plan.